A crew member of the capsized Costa Concordia told the Italian coastguard the vessel had only suffered a power outage and there was no emergency onboard, even after passengers had put on life vests, according to a new recording aired on Thursday.

News channel Sky TG 24, which broadcast the tape, said it was the first radio conversation between the coastguard and the cruise ship after the liner, carrying 4,200 passengers and crew, hit a rock off Tuscany’s coast on Friday night and keeled over.

The conversation began at 10:12 p.m. (4:12 p.m. ET), about 30 minutes after the accident, Sky TG 24 reported.

By then, many passengers had called relatives on their cell phones asking them to alert the police, who in turn told the coastguard to check on the state of the ship.

“Good evening Costa Concordia, please, do you have problems on board?” a coastguard official asks the bridge.

An unidentified member of the crew replies: “We’ve had a blackout, we are checking the conditions on board.”

The coastguard asks: “What kind of a problem? Is it just something with the generator? The police … have received a phone call from the relatives of a sailor who said that during the dinner everything was falling on his head,.”

He says some passengers were already wearing life jackets.

The crew member simply repeats that there has been a blackout. “We are checking the conditions on board,” he says, promising to keep the coastguard informed.

Eleven people were killed in the accident and 24 are still unaccounted for, although some of the dead have yet to be identified.

The captain of the ship, Francesco Schettino, is under house arrest and has been accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship.

In another leaked recording released this week, the Italian coastguards are heard angrily pleading with Schettino and telling him to return to his listing ship.

The ship operators have blamed him for the disaster and praised the rest of the crew for their efforts to save lives. Passengers have complained that they were left for hours waiting in lifeboats, stairwells and assembly points before the order to evacuate was issued.

Recovery teams working on the capsized Italian liner are racing against the clock to complete the search for victims of the disaster before the weather turns and salvage crews need to start pumping fuel from the wreck.

One of the specialist diving crews said on Thursday the available window could be as small as 12-24 hours although the chief spokesman of the rescue services denied that any deadline had been set and said the situation was still evolving.

Six days after the 114,500 tonne Costa Concordia capsized off the Tuscan coast, hopes of finding anyone alive on the partially submerged hulk have all but disappeared and the cold waters around the ship have become noticeably rougher.

After interrupting the search on Wednesday when rescuers feared the vast hulk was shifting on its resting place, crews resumed their search at first light on Thursday. They expect to blast three holes in the hull at about 20 metres depth.

The search is expected to focus on the fourth deck, around an evacuation assembly point where seven of the bodies found so far were located.

“The ship is a labyrinth. It’s gigantic and it’s lying on its side in the water. It’s a miracle that so many survived,” said Modesto Dilda, head of the firefighters diving team from Vicenza.

He said the ship was stable and crews would be working non-stop to find the missing.

“It’s important to continue our search. Family members find it important to have the body of the loved one they’ve lost because it gives them closure. We understand this,” he said.

The families of several of the missing are already on the island and more are expected to arrive on Thursday but as hopes of finding survivors disappear, attention has increasingly shifted to the threat of a potential environmental disaster.

The ship is holding more than 2,300 tonnes of diesel and lubricating oil, and salvage crews are already preparing to begin pumping the fuel out of the wreck.

Environment Minister Corrado Clini has warned there is a risk that with sea conditions expected to worsen, the ship could slip down 50 to 90 metres from the reef it is resting on, further damaging the vessel and creating a major hazard to the environment in one of Europe’s largest natural marine parks.

He said ship operator Costa Cruises had been instructed to ensure steps are taken to limit the damage if the ship’s fuel tanks rupture, including putting in place some 1,000 meters of pollution barriers.

Clini said fuel extraction would take at least two weeks and could not begin until the search for survivors and bodies had been completed.

An expected worsening of weather conditions in the next few days has added extra pressure on the diving teams to complete their search of the vessel.

LITTLE HOPE

The ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, blamed for causing the accident by steering too close to shore and then abandoning the vessel before the evacuation was complete, is under house arrest. Prosecutors said they would appeal against a decision by a judge on Tuesday to allow Schettino to return home, saying he may seek to flee.

“We do not understand why the judge took this decision and we don’t agree with it,” an official from the prosecutor’s office in Grosseto said.

In the ruling, the judge said Schettino had shown “incredible carelessness” and “a total inability to manage the successive phases of the emergency,” only sounding the alarm 30 to 40 minutes after the initial impact.

He had abandoned the ship and remained on shore in a state of “complete inertia” for more than an hour, “watching the ship sink,” the ruling said.

“No serious attempt was made by the captain to return even close to the ship in the immediate aftermath of abandoning the Costa Concordia.”

According to Schettino’s lawyer, the captain has admitted bringing the ship too close to shore but he denies bearing sole responsibility for the accident and says other factors may have played a role.

Schettino was always available to provide information to coast guard and rescue services throughout the evacuation, even when he was not on board the vessel, his lawyer says.

Schettino is accused of multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck by sailing too close to shore and abandoning ship before all his passengers and crew scrambled off.

The ship foundered after striking a rock as dinner was being served on Friday night. The owners say the captain swung inshore to “take a bow” to the islanders, who included a retired Italian admiral. Investigators say it was within 150 metres of shore.

Most of the passengers and crew survived despite hours of chaos and confusion after the collision. The alarm was raised not by an SOS from the ship but mobile phone calls from passengers on board to Italian police on the mainland.